Heterotopias of Difference

Michel Foucault gave, at the end of the 1960s, a lecture in which he introduced the term ‘heterotopia’ to indicate “spaces of deviance,” “spaces that are linked to all other spaces” in ways that suspend, and contradict them. This was half a century ago. Foucault, in the notes for the lecture also points out that although all societies have heterotopias, their function changes from culture to culture and over time. This intervention proposes an expansion of the realm of heterotopias, no longer limited to deviance. But, in a society that increasingly characterized by multiculturalism, fragmented lifestyles and increasing social identities, heterotopias are perhaps less clandestine and ab-normal, but more pervasive and diverse.